Recent Andoid IMA SDK (3.37.0) requires library desugaring, but there are still many issues on desugar feature.

Hello Android IMA SDK Team,

I wanted to raise a concern regarding the recent change that makes app desugaring a mandatory requirement in the latest versions of the IMA Android SDK.

As noted in the changelog, the SDK now enforces:

“Adds app desugaring as a requirement for apps integrating the IMA SDK. Apps without desugaring enabled won’t build with the current or future IMA versions.”

While I understand the technical motivations behind enabling desugaring (such as supporting Java 8+ language features), this change may introduce more complexity or instability for developers, especially in real-world, production-grade projects.

Desugaring is not always straightforward to enable or maintain across diverse build environments. According to this issue discussed in the Google Play Services issue tracker( https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/413427422 ) and from personal experience, here are some of the common pain points:

• Incompatibility in multi-module Android projects

• Build failures caused by version mismatches or desugaring-related configuration issues

• Impact on build performance and APK size

• Complications when integrating with other third-party libraries that may or may not support desugaring

• Unexpected runtime errors on certain devices or environments

Moreover, the adoption of desugaring can introduce new layers of complexity—especially for library developers or teams managing legacy codebases.

Given the current state of desugaring and the open issues around it, I respectfully ask the IMA SDK team to reconsider making desugaring mandatory:

• Could this be made optional, or at least provide backward compatibility for teams that are unable to adopt it right away?